Can two brothers from the Upper West Side stand to share the spotlight?

Lately, the sons of attorney Arthur Liman, the Senate’s lead counsel in the Iran-Contra/Oliver North hearings, haven’t had a choice.

One’s an early-rising legal eagle. The other’s a night-owl filmmaker.

And their latest endeavors are both making headlines.

On June 12, just as director Doug Liman was readying for the New York premiere of his first big-budget film, “The Bourne Identity,” starring Matt Damon, his older brother, Lewis Liman, was getting caught in the glare of the paparazzi outside Manhattan federal court, where he was emerging with his client, ImClone founder Sam Waksal, who was indicted on insider-trading charges that morning.

“He’s actually getting his picture in the paper more than I am,” Doug, 35, told The Post, referring to his 42-year-old brother.

“Even though I, for one, wish his prominence wasn’t synonymous with somebody getting in trouble.”

After growing up in a high-achieving Manhattan family – their mom, Ellen, is a painter and their sister, Emily, a professor of neurobiology – the two heeded different callings early on.

Harvard-educated Lewis followed in the footsteps of his father, who passed away in 1997, and attended Yale Law School before becoming a public defender and, in 1999, joining Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, which represents Waksal.

Doug inherited an artistic bent from his mother and, after graduating from Brown University in 1988, attended film school at the University of Southern California. He went on to make the independent films “Swingers” and “Go” in the 1990s.

Now, Doug is getting his first taste of the big time – “Bourne” did $27 million at the box office in its first weekend – at the same time his brother is embarking on the most high-profile case of his career.

But Doug, who says he struggled in school, still considers himself the “black sheep” of the family.

“At the end of the day, I’m still completely overshadowed by Lewis and Emily,” he says. “Before you get to the movie section, you have to pass the business section.”

But Doug is not afraid to mine family experiences for source material in his work.

Later this year, he is scheduled to begin shooting a pilot for ABC called “SDNY” (Southern District New York), based on the exploits of his brother as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York.

“The cases he came home with that he could talk about were, it seemed, amazing,” Doug says. “The things my brother was dealing with seemed more cinematic than the movies I was developing – and his was real life.

“I sort of became obsessed with the U.S. attorney’s office – if I’d known that job existed when I was younger, I would have more likely pursued law.”

Lewis doesn’t seem to mind – Doug says he has even suggested several former colleagues as good characters.